Newport Beach: Dumpster Diving Story

Dumpster diving. This hobby is seen as disgusting by many people, including the City of Newport Beach, California. It is in fact a misdemeanor to trash pick in that city in southern California. I learned the hard way.

Well. I had been trash picking without consequence for a few years previously, so it was a little bit shocking to me. I was lucky enough to be sprung from the Midwest, an area in the United States that apparently has less strict rules on such hillbilly actions. I used to go around my city of Naperville, Illinois looking through peoples trash and found “treasure”. My amazing cousin and I made a business out of this. One summer all we did was “curb hunting” or trash picking through rich people’s garbage. I would download and print the trash collection schedule for the city to know which days trash would be out for certain neighborhoods.

We went out in the bitter cold and the crazy humid hot summers Chicago provided us. We didn’t care, as long as we could find cool and interesting items and make profit, we were all about it.

We had a few scares. There were a few times where people looked out their window and yelled at us like we were raccoons. “Schooo, schoo”. They were yelling at what they thought were raccoons. We left degraded to nothing, but at the same time realizing we had found gold. The gold we found was an antique chandelier that their neighbor had thrown out, valued at $650. This is when I realized we might have a business here. If I could go out one night looking through people’s trash and make at least $100 I had a business. Many nights we found crazy items like the $650 one. It was super profitable. We made hella cash and took trips on this cash. That doesn’t sound to impressive, but for only doing it for three months, it was a lot of money we made.

You might wonder how this relates to what I was talking about with Newport Beach. Well. When I moved to California I kept up my hobby, trash picking. I printed the Newport Beach garbage collection schedule just like I did back in Naperville. I went out every night looking for goodies.

OH BOY! Newport Beach baby! It was a gold mine! From the thrown out Gucci purses I sold to the 50′ flat screen TV’s I brought to my apartment, the items were an amazing step above what I found in the Midwest. I can only guess that this is because a lot of people in California are rich?

That is not a question, not at all. The people of Newport Beach, California are rich. Newport Beach had a median household income of $106,333 in 2015. I’ll let you decide that for yourself whether or not they are rich.

Let us get to the nitty gritty.

One night, “curb hunting” through Newport Beach’s Corona Del Mar neighborhood I was approached by a security guard of a home as I was picking through trash. A woman who looked like Sandra Bullock came out with guns in her pockets in holsters and asked me, “Can I help you?”

I said OMG i Am so Sorry, I didnt mean to ppick though t ur trash

she took my ID

Cops Came

Told me I was gonna be arrested

Turns out i Coudlnt be arrested

Turns out the people that live there are in the Forbes 500, the owner of the Anaheim Ducks, and the owner of my engineering school.